LittleBigPlanet Karting turns kids into ace race track architects

LittleBigPlanet Karting

So it turns out my seven-year-old kid is a race circuit design genius.

But that came later.

The two of us began LittleBigPlanet Karting — the latest entry in Sony Corp.’s PlayStation-exclusive line of family friendly build-your-own-game games starring adorable little burlap sack people — by racing through the story mode together.

The campaign is composed of more than 70 events set in themed environments filled with everyday objects re-purposed for racing obstacle duty, including spigots and sponges, bike wheels and bonbons. (One candy-coated track is actually dubbed Sugar Rush — the name of the girly kart racer featured in Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph. Coincidence?).

We were won over by quirky power-ups that let us transform into a giant boxing glove to plow through opponents, distort each other’s screen, and fast-forward to the front of the pack. There’s also a clever drifting mechanic that lets you enter a highly controllable power skid at the touch of a button, and you can spin your kart in the air during jumps to activate a speed boost upon landing.

Combine these smart features with some original objectives — such as a chaotic free-for-all race in which players try to hold onto a giant egg for as long as possible — and you have a karter that encourages players to sometimes lay off the pedal and think more about strategy.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a LittleBigPlanet game without collectible balls containing customization items for your textile avatars. We collected scores of these on the track, then spent long stretches in the popit menu transforming our characters and their rides. I eventually settled on a poncho-clad Mexican piloting a tank, while my daughter created a sack girl who resembled Grace Kelly driving an old-timey roadster floating on a cushion of anti-gravity.

It was fun, but as we continued it became apparent that some things were just a little off.

My daughter was frustrated that she couldn’t always turn or jump when she wanted. I noticed this, too, and blame it on slight changes in track elevation that serve to lift karts off the ground for a moment here and there. If you don’t have contact with the tarmac, turns and jumps don’t register, which can be more than a little aggravating.

I was more irked, though, by my computer-controlled opponents’ preternatural knack for unleashing power-ups and weapons in the closing seconds of almost every race, snatching away what seems like a sure victory.

Fans of kart racers know that the concept of fairness doesn’t always apply in these games. You can run a perfect race, hitting every shortcut and speed boost, deflecting or avoiding nearly every incoming attack, and still lose to some devious competitor who lands a rocket on your kart at just the right moment.

The problem with LittleBigPlanet Karting is that this happens too often. We raced one circuit a dozen times without winning, losing in the final stretch nearly every time. And we were playing on the easiest difficulty setting, the one recommended for young players.

Thankfully, you don’t need to place first to keep progressing through the story mode. Just placing in the top three is good enough to unlock new campaign races, versus games, and bonus challenges.

We enjoyed our time in the campaign, it just wasn’t the constant delight that the best Mario Kart games can be.

It wasn’t until I deposited my daughter in the track editor to keep her busy while I took a phone call that I saw her eyes really light up.

When I came back about ten minutes later I didn’t expect anything more than a jumble of randomly placed objects and a bunch of questions about how to do this or that. What I found instead was a simple, clean, perfectly race-able circuit — and not a single query for help on her lips.

Over the next two hours, I watched as she crafted half a dozen more circuits, each one more impressive than the last. She quickly discovered through trial and error that tight technical stretches filled with hairpins, figure eights, and reverse turns can be fun, but that they need to eventually spill into satisfying straightaways to give drivers a chance to recuperate and let loose. After repeatedly flying off the track in play tests, she began to add rails on tight corners. After dropping loads of weapons and power-ups on the track (which made races a bit too wild), she became much more restrained in their allocation.

I just sat back and watched her roll out the road. My only contribution was to suggest descriptors once she had saved her work and wanted to publish her creation for the online community to enjoy. That’s how easy it is to make tracks in LittleBigPlanet Karting. A seven-year-old can do it with no help from her dad.

But there’s also an enormous variety of more complex elements just waiting to be exploited by older, more skilled level designers.

Veterans can go wild with the editor’s logic functions, setting switches for dynamic game objects and managing how and when they activate, then labour over a track’s look and feel, reshaping backdrops and inserting custom images.

As has become customary for all LittleBigPlanet games, gifted British orator Stephen Fry delivers no less than 60 video tutorials that thoroughly explain the ins and outs of every facet of the track editing system.

But these lessons are unnecessary for younger kids who just want to slap some turns together and get racing. In this sense, LittleBigPlanet Karting outshines even its build-your-own-platformer predecessors, which can’t compete in terms of sheer accessibility for youngsters.

I suspect my daughter will end up spending more time creating tracks than racing on them, which is far from a bad thing. I love a game that lets kids use their imagination.

Still, I can’t help but wonder how much better LittleBigPlanet Karting could have been if the tracks players create were as much fun to race on as they are to make.